What an amazing ride! The MS level of IBOB this year was fertile soil to sandbox this world wide program. IBOB isn't an island: without the enthusiastic engagement of teachers, techies, and teacher librarians from all over the world providing inspiration and feedback this simply would not have been possible. One name must be mentioned here: THANK YOU to Hamlet without whose ingenious database to handle questions the rounds could not be distributed and personalized in such an efficacious manner to facilitate multiple thousands of schools down the road if schools deem it worthwhile. The distribution database is the foundation to make this possible for any school anywhere there is internet.Congratulations to The American School in Tegucigalpa, Honduras for claiming the gold medal for South America and The German Swiss International School in Hong Kong for taking the gold in Asia. Congratulations to The British School, Quito, Ecuador for taking silver in SA as well as The French International School, Hong Kong and The International Christian School, Hong Kong for taking silver and bronze respectively. Next year schools are ready to represent at MS level on four continents and a world wide championship round is on the horizon. Hopefully your school will permit you to proudly display your medals on your website or at least you can put them on your library or classroom landing page. Looking so forward to August!!Finally, a huge thank you to the Association of Librarians in English Speaking Schools Hong Kong (ALESS) for creating such a professional enquiry atmosphere that leads to ventures such as this!

Finally I must write. Although I occupy no lofty position to qualify for this “Signature Sunday” space, and as a result of said absence of lofty position, my sphere of influence was not enough to strong arm anyone into blogging for IBOB this week. So, I’m on. Firstly, Happy Mother’s Day! And on that note please do read my mother’s blog post below even if you do not finish mine. The closing paragraph is simply crushing! Tonight I am moved. I experienced something last week with my dozen Hong Battle of the Books (HKBOB) students that was staggering. We entered our first ever Jewish school for the semi-finals. We are accustomed to security standards at international schools’ entrances at varying levels of invasion but this exceeded all of our expectations. The metal detectors were on par with the aviation industry. Nothing like a good pat down with your mocha to start your school day! I noted after about the 5th student that it was taking about one minute per student and traffic being what it was this further delay would make us late to the venue. One of my students commented, “Mr McEntire don’t you think this is a little over the top?” To which I replied with a healthy dose of sarcasm and a slight roll of the eyes, “You could say that.” Then for just a moment I paused, pondered, and reflected. I was coming to a ‘Eureka’ at the precise moment one of my students said, “I’m Jewish.” The feeling of overwhelming context was so profound that I literally had to steady myself against a wall. We had tension, the palpable kind of tension that I believe Bill Ferriter referred to in his recent blog when he said, “I’m convinced that tension is the source of all original learning.” This people group felt it was only prudent to put into place the protection and precautions we encountered. The discussion that ensued as the last 8 of us filed in was deep, exploratory, with a robust vibe of reconciliation. True authentic and holistic learning at its best, full of emotion, jolting. The proverbial unrehearsed teachable moment. When I shook the Director’s hand after moderating a glorious set of battles celebrating reading and literature, I can honestly say I have never been so thankful to a school opening up its doors to host such an event. The IB learner profile descriptor “risk taker” just falls so flat. And I walked away galvanized that International Battle of the Books must be a bridge for children of all faiths and no faiths in all corners of the globe to read the same titles to perhaps get a glimpse of one another and then engage in friendly battles so that maybe, just maybe, they will develop enough compassion and understanding to avoid real battles down the road when their worlds collide. In IBOB everyone wins, in real war everyone loses. And at that point in their lives there will be no metal detectors to prevent the pain.

Bryant McEntire asked merecently to be a guest blogger. My immediate response was: why me? He implied that he thought I had something to contribute to the IBOB community. My first response was just to laugh at him (which is my usual response seeing as I am a Kiwi and he is a crazy North American) but I agreed to write a short blog post. Do I have much to say? Not really, but I am a passionate reader, and I am also passionate about global connectedness and growing internationally-minded kids. I am a teacher and have been working in schools for over twenty years - both here in New Zealand and overseas. One thing I have seen clearly in all of the different educational settings I have worked in is this: kids who read are setting themselves up for lifelong success. That is the bottom line. We don't all have opportunity to travel and experience other cultures, but through the inspiring gift of literature we can see the world through the eyes of others and begin to grow our understanding of our similarities and differences. One of the best aspects of IBOB is the breadth of literature included in the book lists and the global nature of the competition. The kids at Thorrington are very excited about the prospect of reading books that they would never have been able to access through local sources. The concept of using technology to engage with and compete against kids from all around the world is just amazing! I believe that with the technology available to us and the range of services to connect students all around the globe there is no excuse for teachers to be confining their students to just one learning community. When we read the same books and are able to share our notions about how those books reflect our own experiences we are beginning the process of connecting. IBOB is an exciting idea... I believe that it is an idea worth taking time to pursue. Will our kids benefit from it? Will they learn more about themselves as readers and learners? Is it worth connecting our students to learners around the globe? The answer to all these questions, in my opinion, is unequivocally "Yes!" Let the battle begin!

For much of my childhood my parents worked as missionaries in Papua New Guinea and Fiji, making me a “third culture kid” like many students of international schools. We didn’t have TV, so reading and playing were pretty much our only forms of entertainment. My father was studying a children’s literature unit as part of his Masters degree, and one day a box of kids’ books arrived from Australia. I was pretty excited when I opened it for him and found dozens of classic children’s books lined up. To me that cardboard box was like a treasure chest, and I pilfered the lot, making them my own private library (from which my father was allowed to borrow, obviously).

To be honest, without those books, I very much doubt that I’d have become a writer at all, much less a writer for children and young adults. What follows are five of the highlights from that box.

Josh – Ivan SouthallJosh is the only Australian book to have won the Carnegie Medal, in 1973. Despite its words looking like prose on the page, I believe that this book's narrow stream-of-consciousness viewpoint and unorthodox sentence structure make it the first Australian verse novel, a form which is nowadays often tried but rarely perfected. But more than that, to a slightly awkward missionary kid like me, this story of belonging and expectation sang to me like nothing else I’ve ever known.

The Mouse and His Child – Russell Hoban This book is a whole bunch of things: a children’s fable, a study of philosophy, a rollicking good yarn, an examination of belonging and family, and a sure-fire tear-jerker. I first read it at twelve, and I’ve re-read it every couple of years since, and each and every time another layer is peeled back. In my opinion it is one of the finest books ever written, period.

Danny the Champion of the World – Roald Dahl Tim Burton made the wrong movie. Charlie just went on a factory tour; Danny was a hero – it’s right there in the title. I also like this one better than a lot of Dahl’s books (even though they’re all great) because it’s the most believable. I love magic and absurdity, but this sticks to (fairly) believable, and it’s that realness that I love.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain Okay, so it’s two books, but still… Living and playing in Fiji, my friend Shannon and I treated these books less like stories and more like character sketches. We would read by night, and play by day, mostly as the characters in our books, or by using the scenarios from those stories as inspiration. Hot, humid tropical days exploring deep, cool rivers on bamboo rafts meant we were basically Tom and Huck, although we never worked out who was who. As a result of all this, we learnt that characters are important, and that stories are open-ended. And endless. And miraculous. I also want to give an honourable mention to Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis However you feel about the incredibly obvious Christian stuff, nothing changes the fact that the Chronicles of Narnia were superb, accessible works of fantasy. In my opinion, this series is superior to everything Tolkien ever wrote in almost every department. (Please, no angry letters – it’s merely an opinion.) But I’m sure I’m not the first or last kid to check the back of the wardrobe for a doorway into Narnia. The power of Narnia is its ability to immerse the reader in a world of pure adventure. Literarily anything seems possible. And as anyone will tell you, taking a reader safely into another world, even for an afternoon, is what most writers live to do. And now I do, thanks in part to that wonderful, marvellous, magical cardboard box.

Please visit Australian author Mr. James Roy's home page and learn about the contemporary new worlds he is creating for our readership or peruse his books available outside of Australia or in the UK by selecting the covers below.

To say that the atmosphere was charged would be an understatement! An estimated 50 students took part in a grand experiment the circumstances of which were thrust upon the organizers by a perfect storm: a time differential of 13 hours, a Friday night in Asia, and a 5 day school holiday for the French International School that dispersed FIS students all over the world by 10PM. With this concoction we opened up the funnel a bit and allowed students to participate from wherever they found themselves in the world. This made this friendly experimental round very much lopsided but this was anticipated. A huge thank you to the American School Tegulcigalpa, Honduras and The British School Quito, Ecuador for being willing to participate with all the cards stacked against them just so data could be gathered: 1 PC in each of their schools VS 2 PCs at GSIS and ~10 for FIS in experienced hands. Rather than take up space here in this blog by recreating the proverbial wheel, chase this link for a detailed write up and pictures of the GSIS IBOB pijama party experience. Mrs Ida Griffiths-Zee continues to pave new roads and raise the stakes on reaching children internationally with reading lists and activities that pull us closer no matter where we are geographically. Thank you to all those who joined in as spectators and for the positive feed back and recommendations. I'm looking forward to seeing you again in the IBOB chatroom in the near future!

IBOB schools FIS, GSIS, and CSS in Hong Kong had the distinct pleasure of hosting Mr James Roy for workshops, readings, and big venue lectures centered on the art of story telling. We so appreciated his giving spirit that a couple of his books made it onto future IBOB lists and even a couple of titles written by his friends! Come and see us again soon James!! Please visit his website to read about him and browse his more than 30 titles here!

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